The present disclosure relates to a scanner device and an image forming apparatus.
In association with recent development in informational technology, cellular phones, touch-panel-type tablet devices, and other terminal devices have become widely used by general users. These terminal devices have a display portion such as a liquid crystal screen for displaying images. A user can acquire desired information from images displayed on the display portion.
When one user intends to let other user view the information, the user typically sends the image data to a terminal device of the other user. However, the other user does not always carry a terminal device, or communication environment is not always established in the periphery. In such a case, it is conceivable to directly read the image displayed on the terminal device by a scanner device, and hand out a copy of the read image printed by a copying machine or the like. Such a situation is expected to further increase with the prevalence of terminal devices.
Conventionally, a facsimile apparatus having image reading means that reads a screen of an information terminal is disclosed. For enabling correct entry of a facsimile number without relying on the ten keys, the facsimile apparatus makes a scanner directly read a screen of an information terminal on which a facsimile number stored in advance is displayed, and recognizes a sequence of numerals from the image by character recognition means such as OCR (Optical Character Reader).
In this conventional art, simple information such as a facsimile number or a character displayed on a screen of a cellular phone is recognized. However, terminal devices that are recently marketed have a large screen, and information displayed on the screen such as color graphs and graphics has large amount of information. In addition, these terminal devices have backlight of liquid crystal, organic EL (Electro Luminescence), or the like, and the light of their display portion can be turned on/off. Accordingly, for appropriately reading the screen of such a terminal device by a scanner device, it is necessary to set the reading condition appropriately in each time.